The Story of the Philosopher's Camp

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James Schlett will speak on his new book A Not Too Greatly Changed Eden: The Story of the Philosophers Camp in the Adirondacks. 

In August of 1858 America’s leading intellectuals gathered at Follensby Pond in the 

Adirondacks. Included in this group were the transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Harvard scientist Louis Agassiz, and the Cambridge poet James Russell Lowell. They were led into the Adirondack wilderness by William James Stillman, a painter who co-founded the nation’s first art journal, the Crayon. News that these cultured men were living in tents appeared in newspapers across the nation. Schlett’s will talk about the experience of those who attended and the way their journey into the woods began to change how Americans saw the wilderness.